A.I. and Cultural Heritage Research Presentation
This event is co-hosted by UCLA College Division of Social Sciences and UCLA DataX.
About the presentation:
The sudden appearance and rapid proliferation of large language models (LLMs) in the past
several years has brought about a reckoning over the use of intelligent machines in tasks
previously done by humans. Cultural institutions, which bear a special responsibility to
characterize and promote human excellence and ingenuity, are justifiably apprehensive
about delegating important judgments to intelligent machines. In this talk, Crockett will argue
that modern A.I. represents an increasingly faithful expression of human intelligence, and
although there are associated risks, the risk profile is not what it may seem. The current
generation of A.I. models are considerably less risky than their predecessors, because they
are more intelligent, far easier to steer and none of their power is autonomous: it is derived
entirely from contexts of deployment and is fully controllable by humans. Moreover, LLMs
provide fresh opportunities to push toward the hypothetical end goal of cultural heritage
research - an inclusive and accurate portrayal of the staggering diversity of human cultural
expression.
About the speaker:
Damon Crockett is lead scientist in the Lens Media Lab within the Institute for the
Preservation of Cultural Heritage at Yale University. Previously, he was a postdoctoral
associate in Yale’s Digital Humanities Lab, and has held appointments at the University of
Chicago, UCLA and UC San Diego, where in 2015 he completed a Ph.D. in philosophy and
cognitive science. He has spent the past 10 years applying A.I. to the study of culture,
specializing in computer vision, data visualization, unsupervised learning and interpretability.
More recently, his research attention has shifted to the “linguistic turn” in AI and the ways
that large language models can be used productively in cultural heritage research.
This event was made possible by the generous sponsorship of Jeffrey P. Cunard.